Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
Interpretation
Irony highlights the coexistence of opposites, illustrating the complexity of truth.
This quote by Schlegel suggests that irony serves as a manifestation of paradox, where two seemingly contradictory ideas can coexist and reveal deeper truths about life. Paradoxes compel us to think more critically about situations, highlighting the richness and complexity of experiences that can be both good and great simultaneously.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of truth.
Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.
A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.
Wonder knows that while you cannot look at the light, you cannot look at anything else without it. It is not exhausted by childhood, but finds its key there. It is a journey like a walk through the woods over the usual obstacles and around the common distractions while the voice of direction leads, saying, 'This is the way, walk ye in it.'
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.
From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.
I have had the good fortune through my God that I should never abandon his people whom I have acquired in the extremities of the earth.
If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.
If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
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